Living with Cancer: Help My Hurt hosts this month’s Theme Day

Welcome to April’s Theme Day at b5Media’s Health and Wellness Channel.

In Canada, there will be an estimated 166,400 new cases of cancer and 73,800 deaths in 2008. Every two weeks, approximately 3200 Canadians are diagnosed with cancer. In the United States, about 1,437,180 new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2008.

Those are scary numbers. On the other hand, as progress in research continues, many cancers that were considered untreatable less than a generation ago, now see some – or many – patients treated successfully.

Every month, one of the blogs here at the Health and Wellness channel hosts a theme day and this month is my turn. Here are the offerings around the channel by my knowledgeable and talented fellow bloggers.

First stop: Mary Emma Allen at Alzheimer’s Notes says, “Alzheimer’s disease is not always an isolated diagnosis. Often the patient has other health problems and one might be cancer.”

Then, Ruth Schaffer over at Eating Fabulous has a post on how the choline in eggs can help reduce breast cancer risk.

After our stop at Ruth’s, we welcome new-to-us blogger Hope Wilbanks who joins us with Weighting Line. Her post for the theme day is on obesity and cancer.

Tired of food? Then hop on over to see Alicia Sparks at Mental Health Notes, where she dives into the issue of how mental health can’t be neglected during the fight with cancer.

Once you’re done visiting those sites, you may want to pop over to Gloria’s Cancer Commentary, where she discusses cancer and hope. There should always be hope. Patients should have it, Cancer Scientists should seek it. In cancer, we all need the hope we can get.

Speaking of hope, two time breast cancer survivor Karen Lynch over at the new b5media blog Pink Ribbon Review has written an essay on the thoughts that fill a survivor’s mind called There are Survivors Among Us.

Now that I’ve wandered over to Breastfeeding 1-2-3, Angela’s post on a toddler with leukemia makes me realize, yet once again, how incredibly lucky I am. How very, very lucky I am.

Ok, now we’re hopping over to Diabetes Notes, where Kendra is talking about 6 new genes which play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes and, among the group, is the second gene known to also play a role in prostate cancer.

While you’re still with Kendra, your next stop should be at her A Hearty Life, where she wrote about research that has suggested the soy bean could reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease and menopause symptoms, let alone melt away your pounds.

Need a rest? Nah, now it’s time to go on over to Elaine’s Genetics and Health where she writes about how scientists believe they have identified a gene that may be able to limit the growth of breast cancer tumors.

Ah, we’re not finished our Health and Wellness channel tour yet! We can’t forget Gabrielle at Fertility Notes, because infertility and fertility issues are common long-term effects of radiation and chemotherapy, especially when treatments occur during or before puberty. Cancer can be cured, but the shadows cast by the cure are long and lasting.

Tired yet? No! Don’t be, we still haven’t visited Kristen King’s Lively Women where she reviews a new breast cancer screening test that uses blood biomarker levels to determine who may have breast cancer.

Kristina at Autism Vox has an interesting post: To illustrate what some term as an “autism epidemic,” people regularly compare the prevalence rate of children diagnosed with autism to that of children diagnosed with childhood cancer (1.5 per 10,000 children) or to the rate of children who have three diseases, pediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined.

Wait! One more stop: Liz at Healthbolt has written a post on dentists and cancer screening: “We think of dental offices as places to have teeth cleaned and fillings filled. But in the near future, they could also be the place to get screened for breast cancer.”And that’s it for theme day. While I can’t say I hope you enjoyed the posts, reading about cancer isn’t something we exactly enjoy, I hope that we provided you with a really good cross section of cancer information. Please don’t forget to leave comments – they help us learn what people are reading and wanting to learn about.

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